Frequency Capping and Priority Explained

February 10, 20190Comments

Whether you’re just getting started and still getting to grips with your CPMs, CTRs and S2Ss or you’re a seasoned media buyer; one thing that seems to remain unclear for some is how Frequency Capping and Banner Priority works.

Both of these are pretty cool tools which allow you even greater control over how you can better manage and optimise your TrafficStars campaigns, yet our Account Managers are regularly asked how these tools work.

Today we’re here to shed light on the mysteries of these pro features! Read on to find out all.

Frequency CappingFrequency capping restricts (capping) the number of times (frequency) a unique visitor is shown an ad within a 24-hour period. With TrafficStars, frequency capping is set per creative, not campaign.

For example, if you create 1 campaign with 5 creatives and a capping of 1 per creative, a unique user will see that campaign up to 5 times (he will see each creative once).

It’s important to note that frequency capping is set per domain name. So, if you create a campaign which targets two different sites from the TrafficStars publisher network and set frequency capping of a creative to 1, a user who visits both sites may see the same campaign and same ad twice.

You can change the frequency capping of your campaign by visiting the Ads tab and choosing from 1 to 5 or “No capping”. The default setting is “no capping”.

Remember that a low cap may lead to less impressions for your campaign.

Frequency capping can be used for an advertiser who wishes to target the first impression of a user in a 24-hour period.

Banner PriorityYou can set up different priorities for creatives in a campaign to make sure your preferred creatives will be shown more often to you targeted audience. The priority tool works with a weight system, meaning the higher the priority number, the higher the probability it will be shown.

In the case where you have 2 banners:#1 has priority 1#2 has priority 2The first will receive ~33,3% traffic and the second ~66.6% traffic.

Generally, the display of banners is by “pseudorandom” (computer-made randomness) and priority just increases the probability of the system choosing the banner with the biggest weight.

For example, if you have 4 banners and the weights are respectively 1, 2, 3, 4: the system calculates the sum of all weights (1+2+3+4=10), and for each banner it sets the probability as the weight of banner divided by the sum of all weights (such as 1/10, 2/10, 3/10, 4/10, so the chances will be 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% per banner accordingly).

It does not guarantee that the banner with the highest priority will get the 1st impression but it definitely increases its probability.

Banner priority can be used to make sure a user is more likely to see a specific banner which is converting well for you, without having to pause other creatives in a campaign.

SummaryBoth of these features are fantastic ways of further optimising your TrafficStars campaigns, and are at your disposal within the TrafficStars platform. But, don’t worry – you’re not alone with this – contact your Account Manager or the Support Team who will be more than happy to help you use these tools for the best results!

The publishing rights of this post belongs to the Company TrafficStars. For offering interesting information and creating better coverage, for our customers this information has been reposted.